Cadtronix Music - cadtronix.com

"Saving Old Horn Music for the Horn Community"

Cadtronix was founded in 1988 as a printed circuit board design service. I am a retired electrical engineer and amateur horn player. In 2012 I started a horn quartet, horn trio, and/or horn duet group. I had an old copy of the Gumbert Horn Quartets, Book Three, plus a few other quartets and duets to start. The group enjoyed playing, but I realized that we would get tired of playing the same music each week. I started looking for old public domain manuscripts. I found many including the other three books of the Gumbert Quartets. I had been using music notation software for years but after frequent crashes, looked for an alternative. I discovered Sibelius music notation software and found it far more productive. The other players really liked the new music I was producing. I decided to make the music available to other horn players and build the Cadtronix Music website under cadtronix.com. I have since published quite a bit of music but there is much more out there. I intend to keep adding music to this site.

I have always been bothered by sheet music that turns yellow and falls apart with age. Cadtronix Music is printed on high quality paper with laser printers to avoid this. I also wanted music that would lie flat after a page turn and turned to spiral binding as a solution. I also dislike bad page turn locations so blank pages with horn pictures are often used to eliminate them. Cues are used frequently. Ossias are used when it helps in keeping the players together.

In the beginning it was sometimes hard to find a horn player to play the really low parts. It occurred to me that the euphonium, being a conical bore instrument, might work. I knew an excellent ex-marine band euphonium player. I invited him to join us and he "loves playing with horn players because they are so sensitive to dynamics and phrasing" (his words). That is why I try to include the euphonium option for the lowest part of most of the music.